Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi David,

I can run a quick scan for you and tell you what sort of shape your link profile is in, but what 'could' have happened is that since the penalty, another algorithm has come along and hit you for something else. A little awkward to guess exactly though, but have seen this happen on a number of occasions.

Edit-- OK, your link profile isn't too healthy I'm afraid David. One even listed as Malicious... If you want to drop me a mail over, I will give you a little more info info@inetseo.co.uk

-Andy

Hi Neil,

I have had very good success with Google places for customers by adding them into more local directories (for one part). Open any places page and go down to the bottom and look at the local results where the site is being found. You want to get yourself into more of these - find out which sites others are being found in and drop your customers in there

Regards,

Andy

Hi,

There are likely to be a number of factors that play a part in this, although there is no rules from Google on how to achieve it. If there were, people would be changing them based on what they want, rather than what Google wants. It is also worth remembering that Google only show these for brand searches, so a strong brand is important.

That said, if I were looking at this myself, I would include the following:

• Clean internal linking structure with good anchor text
• Correctly code your links to ensure they can be fully spidered
• Links to your desired pages
• Pages with a low bounce rate and good organic traffic that already appear in the SERPs for their desired phrase(s)
• Unique page content that is no duplicated anywhere else
• Unique and appropriate page titles and descriptions

There is never any guarantee that you can influence these sitelinks or have Google guarantee a demotion, but follow a bit of best practice, and you might have some success.

-Andy

Redirecting via a 301 is always the preferred method of pointing one page to another Devon. Just from what I have seen, I can't see a reason why this should cause you any issue. Just have the location pages follow a preferred route and stick with that. Take all of the non-preferred pages and 301 these to the ones you wish to use.

You should be fine and avoid any issue of duplication.

-Andy

You're welcome. Good luck and you know where to find me if you have any additional questions

-Andy

if you drop me a quick mail over David (address above) I can give you a little more detail. Wouldn't be something I could do here.

-Andy

I would avoid trying to run a website based on keywords or phrases as Matt Cutts has been quoted as saying that they have been paying too much attention to this in the past, so expect this to get a hit at some point. Those that have keywords in the name or that are made up of keywords will probably suffer a little.

Just go with the company name as this is the brand that people will remember and recognise.

Regards,

Andy

This is one of those circumstances where Google know that an attorney and lawyer are one in the same and will deliver results for Lawyer when you search for Attorney. As David said, if you try to cover off both words here, then you could land yourself in trouble.

If I do a search for "London Immigration Attorney" then I get results back for Lawyer, so for me, this is the phrase that I would go for.

-Andy

Hi Ade,

This isn't something I would advise splitting across domains. Choose the domain you wish to use and then sub-cats for the different types of dentistry. If you have two similar sites at the same address, it will make Google wonder why it was done (SEO purposes) and you could have issues on your hand.

-Andy

There - you can see how often I have worked on IIS servers

You are fortunate to be in one of the few market areas where you can actually do this with with a good degree of success and not have to handle it all manually Jeffrey!

So that aside, I can't see issues with what you are planning, but as above, do remember that some link juice loss will happen with any 301.

-Andy

If Google says they have been giving away too much to websites with keywords in the domains, then you had better be sure that to improve their results, that they will do something with it. However, will they tell us? Probably not. But after doing this for just over 10 years, you learn not to mess around with the search engines. If you feel you want to go against a metric that Google will start using at some point, feel free to put your customer in that position, but it will be a cold day in hell before I would endorse or undertake something like that myself. Andy

Google has said that there will be a 'small' benefit to doing this, but there is no way to determine if you will be guaranteed a SERP improvement. There is more at play than just https when calculating where a site will sit. If the sites above you are of a higher quality with more Domain Authority, for example, then it is unlikely that you would see a movement.

However, Google has said they want people to do this, so it can't hurt.

-Andy

Hi Cornelius,

Are you referring to remarketing with regards Google Adwords? If so, this is what it is and where you can read more:

Remarketing lets you show ads to people who have visited your website or used your mobile app before. When people leave your website without buying anything, for example, remarketing helps you reconnect with them by showing relevant ads as they browse the web, as they use mobile apps, or as they search on Google.
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2453998?hl=en-GB

I would also suggest having a read here:

http://www.google.co.uk/ads/innovations/remarketing.html

If this isn't what you thought it was, or not what it refers to, please let me know.

-Andy

The change of address in GWT only handles domain to domain moves and wouldn't understand how to handle this. If Product.com was moving to Brand.com, then you would be correct to use this then.

What you are doing using the 301's is correct.

-Andy

Absolutely Jeffrey. It is just an identifier so should be no issues with this at all. I have a large client who have done a very similar thing and 18 months on, SERP positions are still in the top 2

-Andy

Yes, I guess there would be a backlash in the same way that panda was about to use triggers to allow them to weed out the site that are not playing ball.... Never try and second guess what Google will or can do... And I speak with more than just a little experience here... and more than 80,000 first page terms for my customers. As soon as I get wind that there is to be a change, I prepare well in advance for my customers so that they will not get a knock of any sort. I guess this is what keeps customers coming back.

As Google has said that guest posting is now considered a spammy tactic, I would look at this as a possible part of the problem. Read what Matt Cutts says about it here.

You need to be thinking outside the box and look for other ways to build links, but I would cease guest posting. You need to also look at how links coming back from these guest posts were created, as it is very easy to get this wrong and cause yourself an additional headache. You should never use keyword rich anchor text, for example.

-Andy

I hear it's good to have similar named domains to redirect to main sites and is good for seo!

I echo Dirks comments that there is no value in doing this and I pretty sure there never has been this benefit. A URL redirected to another carries no weight with Google.

As a vanity URL, no issues with doing that at all. I do see this fairly often where a targeted URL like this on a business card, then forwards to the main website itself. It's a nice way for people to remember you.

-Andy

I tend to follow the rule of thumb that states, if you have a close match to a page being removed, then setup a 301 there. If not, it is better to remove it altogether and give it a 410 (Gone) rather than a 404 (Not Found).

I hope that helps a little.

-Andy